Oxford Professors of Poetry

The Oxford chair of poetry was founded in 1708 following a bequest by Henry Birkhead, a Berkshire landowner. Besides three public lectures per year, the Professor gives the Creweian Oration, a speech in praise of benefactors: in the 1750s this accompanied a Handel oratorio as part of a concert, but since Roy Fuller finally managed to have legislation passed to enable the Professor to orate in English rather than Latin (this did not happen until 1972), the custom has been to entertain with deadpan wit. (James Fenton's 1999 oration concerned pilchards, woodworm and the restoration of the Bodleian Library roof). A further duty is to set the theme for, and judge, the Newdigate Prize: more diffusely, the Professor is expected to encourage student poetry, and successive holders of the post have often done good turns for Oxford Poetry.

The Professor is paid almost nothing and is, uniquely among all Oxford's academics, genuinely elected: in principle anybody may stand, though no candidate without close Oxford ties has ever actually won. Today the outcome is given a substantial steer by consensus among poets in the English faculty, who generally all nominate the same person: Paul Muldoon was not even opposed. Nevertheless, the outcome is not predictable, and some substantial figures (such as Enid Starkie and C. S. Lewis) have been defeated in the past. All Oxford graduates (that is, MA degree holders) may vote, but must do so in person, reducing an electorate of 180000 to more like 700.

The idea that the Chair actually related to poetry is a recent one. Early Professors varied from popular Oxford figures who were handy with epigrams to literary critics such as Robert Lowth (1741-51). In the early nineteenth century, it could be a Church affair, and the heated 1841 contest was a theological dispute between a Tractarian and an Evangelical candidate; but Matthew Arnold, the first Professor to give his public lectures in English rather than Latin (1857-67), made the post much more of a public platform for literary and social comment. It was not until the 1951 election of C. Day Lewis that the idea of a poet as Professor came to seem normal, and only the critics Hugh Jones (1978-83) and Christopher Ricks (2004-09) have broken a run of well-known poets.

This year, in the most controversial (poetry) election race in living memory, Ruth Padel was nine-day queen after Derek Walcott withdrew his candidacy in protest at a dirty tricks campaign. Padel's resignation brought to an end the first female professorship since the post was created. Another election will be held and the editors hope that Walcott will stand again, although it seems very unlikely.

Recent holders of the chair

1895-1901. William Courthope
1901-06. A. C. Bradley
1906-11. John Mackail
1911-16. Thomas Warren
1916-20. Suspended due to war
1920-23. W. P. Ker
1923-28. H. R. Garrod
1928-33. Ernest de Sélincourt
1933-38. George Gordon
1938-43. A. Fox
1944-46. Suspended due to war
1946-51. Maurice Bowra
1951-56. C. Day Lewis
1956-61. W. H. Auden
1961-66. Robert Graves
1966-68. Edmund Blunden
1968-73. Roy Fuller
1973-78. John Wain
1978-83. Hugh Jones
1984-89. Peter Levi, S.J.
1989-94. Seamus Heaney
1994-99. James Fenton
1999-2004. Paul Muldoon
2004-09. Christopher Ricks
2009. (16th-25th May) Ruth Padel